Ask my accountant and he’ll be bound to tell you that numbers are not really my thing. In fact I’ll never forget that bewildered look he gave me all those years ago as I carefully explained my home-made accounting system to him. Quite frankly his look of scorn was hurtful – that excel spreadsheet and all the biro annotations had taken me HOURS.
Anyway, I’m more confident when sifting through my 2014 web stats. I do like to trawl through the figures to see which posts were well received. It helps me create future recipes and focus on areas that I know you want help with.
After a bit of collating, here are the five recipes that you checked out the most in 2014. Each pic links through to the original recipe. Helpfully, I’ve also added in my speculation about why they were popular – it’s a totally unscientific crunching of what the numbers MEAN. Some may call this talking-out-my-bum, but I prefer to see it as valid qualitative research.
Honey boo boo might leave off the coriander.
5. Chicken & rice pilaf
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised – chicken is the most eaten meat in Australia. Teamed up with rice it is comfort food at its gluten-free finest. Plus this is a ONE-POT recipe, which always triggers happiness amongst those of us who do the dishes.
Gluten free, egg free banana cookies
4. Two ingredient banana cookies
Either most of you are inundated with mushy bananas or you are outrageously LAZY! Really, two ingredients between you and home-baked joy? Well, actually this recipe has four, but nonetheless you stampeded to it with open arms.
Perfect for independent toddlers
3. Rice & lentil balls
I’m curious about this one. Evidently you all love the idea of getting these ingredients into your kids, but did you make them and did your kids eat them? I’d love to know whether there was any follow through on the good intentions of this post.
I promise your family will devour this with glee!
2. Slow cooker lamb & barley soup
Aaahhhhhh, slow cooker, come here you gorgeous thing, you. Give us a cuddle. Oh! Even better, give us a dinner that’s a cuddle in a bowl that we can eat…. ooh yeah, that feels goooooooood.
So easy, I barely noticed I was baking.
1. 1/2 cup lunchbox slice
And the recipe that won 2014 was……. my 1/2 cup lunchbox slice, which slid to the top of the charts with a cunning blend of easy-to-makeness and I-made-it-myselfness. Of course I could assume that this is possibly a bit more proof that we’re all a bit kitchen-lazy, but I think I’ll give you all the benefit of the doubt and assume that in our busy lives, a recipe that promised such easy maternal perfection was a godsend.
Did you make any of these? How did they go? What variations did you do make them even better?
Vegie Smugglers 
Jaye said,
January 7, 2015 @ 5:36 pm
Love your recipes and ideas 🙂 Thank you!
Kym Petersen said,
January 7, 2015 @ 8:21 pm
Numbers 5 and 1 are on high rotation here Wendy! The chicken pilaf has been getting a run for a looooooong time, not just in 2014. Not surprised at these results!!
wendyblume said,
January 7, 2015 @ 8:36 pm
ha! yes, it just scrapped in – i posted this early jan last year! I’ve got a nice chicken pesto bake coming up next week. x
Kym Petersen said,
January 7, 2015 @ 8:44 pm
Sounds good, love a bit of pesto
Mummy Mel said,
January 7, 2015 @ 11:24 pm
Made the rice and lentil balls, (very skeptically, thinknig I could always eat them for lunches over the week) .. Absolutely devoured with tomato sauce 🙂 So thank you!
wendyblume said,
January 11, 2015 @ 5:18 pm
Oh! That’s exciting! Well done! X
Ghadeerco said,
January 8, 2015 @ 6:59 am
They’re all amazing but if i had to choose i’d vote for 2 and 4, they’re my favorite.
Katherine Jones said,
January 8, 2015 @ 7:50 am
>
Nashwa said,
January 10, 2015 @ 7:35 am
My personal fav is number 3 “Rice & lentil balls”, keep it up weendy.
Bronwyn said,
January 28, 2015 @ 12:16 pm
The lunchbox slice is the best, so so easy and yummy, I even left out the sugar in one batch and it was fine. I tried it with mashed up mango and banana as the fruit part, so good.